Leading US dailies on Saturday commended President George W Bushâs speech on promoting democracy in the Middle East and said he should follow through by loosening US alliances with autocratic governments in the region.
| Uhhh... Isn't that what he said we should do? Or did I miss something? |
âOne measure of US policy in the Middle East will be whether, in addition to threatening its longstanding enemies, the Bush administration begins to talk differently to some of its allies,â a Washington Post editorial said. âMr Bush spoke well. He is right that Washington has failed to support abroad the values Americans live by at home,â The New York Times said. âThe presidentâs warning of the futility of excusing dictatorship in the name of security seems custom-made for Saudi Arabia,â the editorial went on. âPromoting democracy there must become an urgent American priority.â
| Agreed, as long as "democracy" is taken to mean "individual liberty." Democracy isn't essential for liberty â in fact, a republican system is better suited to fostering it. In theory, you could even have individual liberty under a benign dictatorship, the problem being that dictatorships don't remain benign. Uncontrolled democracy can (and often does) lead to "one man, one vote, one time." |
âAnother country where America relies too much on a dictator for security is Pakistan... President Pervez Musharrafâs timely support for Washington in Afghanistan two years ago should not permanently immunise his dictatorship from needed criticism.â
| It's temporarily immunized him from needed criticism. But Perv, for all his many faults, doesn't run a dictatorship along the lines of, say Syria. He doesn't have a party apparatus, there's no cult of personality, next to no secret police banging on citizens' doors in the dead of night. He actually seems over-indulgent of his opposition. He's more the front man for an oligarchy made up of the military, ISI, the industrialists, and a proportion of the feudalists than a bloody-handed dictator. Let me be dictator in Pakland for a year and shortly after having the 20-foot posters of myself printed I'd be holding organized Qazi-hunts with prizes for the biggest turban bagged. I'd be stuffing the jails full of nazims and nabobs and other officials with their hands in the till. At the end of the year my power would be secure because my opposition would be doorknob dead or in hiding and afraid to come out. |
Both papers urged Bush to encourage democratic opposition movements in the Middle East. âTo succeed in this vitally important endeavor, the Bush administration will have to learn to put the same kind of energy and resources into the diplomatic and educational sides of foreign policy as it has devoted to unilateral military action,â the Times said.
| Both are liberal papers. They're in the habit of calling for more and more diplomacy, but not paying attention as it's occurring around them every day. I guess that's why they pay their reporters so well... |
âThere is a big difference between defending existing democracies and trying to create new ones through invasion and occupation.â Washington should nourish independent civic movements, nascent political parties, human rights activists and dissidents, the Post concurred.
| We'll also have to occasionally inflict democracy on countries run by tin hats or oligarchs. But we also have to pick and choose and in some cases found the civic movements, nascent poltiical parties and human rights activists we support. The mere fact of dissidence isn't a recommendation except to the Times and the Post. Motives and ultimate objectives have to be examined, too... |
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